Search

The Kabul Beauty School: The Art of Friendship and Freedom (2008) is a memoir written by the American beautician, Deborah Rodriguez. It recounts her individual story in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban and the work Western programs of "economic empowerment" and humanitarian agencies of "social emancipation" have done to "reconstruct" the war-torn nation. This involvement in the raw, however, does not exist in some kind of political vacuum. The leaders of these global programs of humanitarian action and "sustainable development" represent an array of neo-compradors: social enterprisers and partisan actors, selling "the burqa-clad woman" of Afghanistan the illusion of economic independence and "social emancipation" through local micro-projects and self-employment initiatives. The language of these agencies of social entrepreneurship and humanitarian service offers a wide-ranging discursive domain within which post-9/11 "counter-terroristic formations" (Boehmer and Morton 2010, 7) thrived in an explosion of distinct discursivities, taking form in pedagogy, morality, sexuality, medical care, philanthropy, beauty industry, women's emancipation, human rights activism and international security and safety measures. These regimes of knowledge and expertise provide important sites of critical inquiry through which counter-terror can be conceptually subverted and discursively deconstructed as part of a larger system of global control and management, within which neo-liberal politics operate at the interface between the metropolis and the postcolony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the multiliteracies framework proposed two decades ago has had a considerable effect on the field of second language (L2) teaching and learning, its successful implementation has been found challenging, both on the conceptual and practical levels. In this paper, we discuss the main hurdles of putting the approach into practice and argue for the use of the genre-based instruction in combination with key constructs of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as a framework that can help address these challenges. Connecting the multiliteracies pedagogy with the genre-based approach, we delineate specifically how the literacy pedagogy moves and knowledge processes that constitute them can be implemented in content- and language-integrated L2 instruction. We illustrate the approach by reporting on the materials development project that focuses on a particular public discourse theme (banning the burka in Austria) and advanced literacy genre (Argumentative Discussion). The project serves as an example of formulating the advanced L2 learning goals and designing activity types that can be used for developing the multiliteracies curricula in other instructional and thematic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the linkages between the online activism and offline protests against the anti-Muslim, Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed in India in 2019. Muslim women initiated a 101-day sit-in protest at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, India to challenge both the anti-Muslim rationality of CAA and the ruling party in India. I analyze how the experiences of Muslim women in physical sites of protests are tied with the presence of digital feminist networks which foster translocal connections and sustain the movement through online activism. I study both the corporeal street protests where the female body is physically deployed as an instrument of dissent and the virtual presence of cyberfeminists who use digital platforms to create and circulate discursive and everyday experiences challenging the surveillance of the precarious female body. In unpacking the connections between body-offline-online, I bring to the surface discussions on the pervasiveness of violence against Muslims, especially women, in India and how they are subjected to instances of discrimination manifest in the form of corporeal punishment as well as discursive vitriol and ridicule. I argue that a protest led by Muslim women in India challenges the majoritarian masculinist assumptions about public spaces, politics, and processes of meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I illuminate the affective and economic factors that drive anti-Muslim sentiment. By lowering the bar of what is sayable, the German New Right creates more acceptance of Islamophobia. Conservative-voting states have held more negative views of Muslims, with the South of Germany being more wary than the North. However, local factors like economic insecurity in de-industrialized regions and high incidence of far-right activities further determine how Germans feel about Islam. Scapegoating Muslims mainstreams 'group-focused enmity' and legitimates violence against minorities and socially weak groups. Currently, populist and far right groups like Pegida and the Alternative for Germany have revived a critique of global economic processes as benefitting only social elites: they dismiss all print journalism as a pack of lies, take a virulent anti-government stance, and create a backlash against career politicians and experts. The fear of refugees gaining access to economic support has provided a convenient scapegoat for processes of devolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a structure analysis of the American infiltration of Afghanistan, particularly the former's instrumentalization of feminist discourse. Topics discussed include how the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks generated an anti-religious political discourse, how religion was contested through the native woman, and the burqa controversy in Afghanistan.

Between February 2002 and November 2018, Swedish politicians from the Centre, Christian Democrat, Moderate, Liberal and Sweden Democrat parties proposed policies to ban clothing variously referred to as the "burka," "full-covering veil," "face veil" and "niqab" (Arabic for face veil) at least 38 times, six at the national level and thirty-two at the municipal. Research suggests that circa 100 women in Sweden wear a "burka"; clearly these policy proposals have little to do with the burka's prevalence. What, then, do these policy proposals attempt to govern? In this text we adopt feminist political scientist Carol Bacchi's "what is the problem represented to be?" approach to analyse Swedish bills to regulate the burka. These policy proposals, we contend, have more to do with conceptualizing Swedishness than addressing an existing "problem" of women who wear burka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has the face veil become the centre of political debates about Islam in urban contexts? What kinds of experiences and ideas have animated its framing as a practice in need of regulation? Focusing on Spain, we argue that space and emotion are the key categories for explaining the micro-politics of face veil conflicts and that constitute face veiling as an object of contention "on the ground". We suggest the notion of regimes of public space and highlight three central components: (1) understandings of ideal public space; (2) regimes of urban visibility; (3) emotional regimes. Taken together, these dimensions filter forms of inclusion and exclusion that emerge from regulatory practices and feed into graduated forms of urban citizenship and frame people's sensibilities. The article also illustrates how the spatial analysis complicates the secular-religious dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alliances are a political opportunity that reinforce the claims made by different players in the political sphere. However, the literature on the political participation of immigrants pays little attention to the formation of alliances and their effects on the interaction between immigrants and institutional actors, especially under circumstances of politicization. This article aims to explain the emergence of alliances between political parties and immigrant organizations when immigration is politicized locally. I argue that the need to legitimize the political parties’ position on the politicization guide their alliances with immigrants. Using qualitative methods, I analyse the emergence of alliances in the anti-Romanian-Roma campaign in Badalona and the burka ban in Lleida, both in Catalonia, Spain. The findings portray these relationships as the outcome of strategic interactions that respond to the balance of power between institutional and non-institutional actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the ban of burqa, a Islamic women wear case, of 'SAS v France' and mentions the events related to the ant-Islamic Charlie Hebdo magazine's cartoons. Topics discussed include protections from incitement to discrimination, hatred, violence against individuals in France; and lack of free speech protections; and the opinion of European Court of Human Rights on the issue.

How can we judge unfamiliar cultures while avoiding ethnocentrism and universals? It requires what I call reflexive cultural judgment. After considering the socially and politically situated knowledge and commitments that guide the judgment of others, those engaged in reflexive cultural judgment meditate on what they have learned in the intercultural engagement and cast a critical eye on their own supposedly universal principles to reveal cultural particulars that typically would not be as visible to insiders. To demonstrate this, the article examines French political judgment of Muslim women who wear thehijab(a head covering) andburqa(a face covering). Through content analysis of previously unanalyzed data on the National Assembly's 2009–2010 discussion of theburqa, the article identifies particular French assumptions about gender and freedom that informed the ban. The author then casts a critical eye on her own political situatedness, highlighting the limitations of American liberal thought on freedom and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the reduced presence of the far-right in Catalonia, anti-immigrant stances and discourses have occupied a central position during political campaigns for local, autonomous, and national elections in 2010–2011. The Catalan case is based on the analysis of three case studies: the local exclusion from the census of undocumented immigrants by the city of Vic, the campaign of the People's Party candidate in Badalona containing hate speech against Roma, and the burqa bans issued by the city of Lleida. Representatives of mainstream political parties, mainly right wing, became the main exponents of intolerance in Catalonia by putting forward that cultural pluralism and diversity challenge the possibility of living together in society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the course of the last thirty years, the publicly visible ‘otherness’ embodied by the Muslim population in the member states of the European Union has sparked movements of transnational moral panic mainly driven by the fear of the collapse of ‘national cohesion’. Generally however, these fears, shared internationally, always become more pronounced when women are at the center of their focus. Islamic women's attire, whatever the terminology used to describe it – veil, scarf, and more recently, ‘burqa’, to designate a garment fully covering the body – is presented as an increasingly delicate problem, an issue at the center of legal battles and the subject of virulent political controversies in France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. This conclusion is more specifically concerned with the ‘public texture’ of the discussions surrounding the recent ban on the wearing of the full veil in European public spaces as analyzed by the contributors to this special issue. It aims to engage in the conversation about the epistemological and political implications of the evaluation of daily, individual experiences through a legal framework and classifying them as problematic in secular contexts, or even criminalizing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘burqa’ bans that have recently been put into effect in several Euro-Atlantic countries are a testament to how public space has been rendered into a terrain of increasing securitization and legal control. The new laws are complex in that they are entangled with entrenched historical attitudes, present-day geopolitics, political expediency, and the politics of race, immigration and national identity. However, they provoke a questioning of what it means when states legislate vision and visuality and of why the visual rather than another domain has become the privileged stage to both communicate the alleged conflict between the ‘West’ and ‘Islam’ and enact the former's disciplining of the latter. In this paper, I examine the trope of the burqa from the perspective of the cultural history of vision, arguing that situating the garment as a visual text in contesting regimes of art and representation, shaped by their respective pre-modern religious narratives, will provide a critical, yet unacknowledged, perspective on facial veiling which, moreover, offers up the possibility of learning to read the sign across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to journal is presented in which the author discusses various reports within the issue on topics related to burqa ban controversies including race discrimination of left legalism, Muslim women and religion, and secularism in Islamic culture.

This paper locates the discussion on wearing niqab and burqa within the context of information acquisition and response formation among Muslims and non-Muslims in the contemporary world. The paper argues that, against the backdrop of varied opinions on Islam and Muslims around the world, the debate on wearing burqa represents the continuation – albeit up-scaling – of the focus on Muslim women as the signifiers of Islam and Muslim identities. Australia is influenced by, and dealing with, the debate on whether or not to ban the burqa and niqab. Opinions among both the wider community and Muslims have differed on the justification and advisability of such a ban. The Australian government at the federal and state levels has demonstrated cautious activism in dealing with the issue, thus protecting the rights of Australian Muslim minorities, and reducing the space in which a heightened sense of exclusion could develop among them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper maps a shift in emphasis in the representation of Muslim women in Western discourse from that of victims in need of Western rescue to that of active participants in Islamism and the ‘Islamisation’ of the West. Muslim women activists have developed an articulate response to representations that depict them as passive victims, emphasising that many women undertake their religious practices (in particular, those relating to dress) by ‘choice’ and play an active role in resisting patriarchal practices imposed in the name of their religion. Their responses to representations of Muslim women as perpetrators of Islamic extremism who must be disciplined into acquiescing to Western/Enlightenment/secular norms, however, are still evolving. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Opposition to the burqa is widespread in Europe but not in the United States. What explains the difference? Focusing primarily on the French case and its Belgian facsimile, we seek to underscore the role of social theorists in legitimizing bans on the full veil. Ironically, this role has been largely disregarded by Anglophone theorists who write on the veil, and who often oppose its prohibition. This article suggests that Europe tends to be morerepressivetowards full veils because its political process is moreopento multiple theoretical representations of the phenomenon of veiling. Conversely, the United States is more open to the provocative display of religious symbols in public because the political process is pre-structured by legal conventions that tend to filter out social theory. The push to ban the burqa in France principally derives from its brand of republicanism rather than being a product of racism and Islamophobia. Of particular significance in the French case is the emphasis on reciprocity as a political principle, a principle that is elongated into an ideal of sociability by French theorists in different disciplines. The arguments of these theorists are described, their rationale is explained and the impact of their intervention on the policy process is documented. The French case, where the popular press and legislature play a major role in shaping policy towards the burqa, is contrasted with that of the United States, where the judiciary, defending religious freedom, remains the most influential collective actor. Each country has correspondingly different attitudes to democracy. In France, the mission of democracy is to extend political equality to the social realm whereas in the United States it is religion that is prioritized so as to protect that which is deemed most sacred to the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent discussion in France surrounding the concept of mixité, or the free association of men and women in society—largely spurred by national discussions about French identity and the challenges posed by some immigrant groups advocating for a greater degree of gender separation in public spaces such as swimming pools and doctors’ offices—brings fresh relevance to Edith Wharton's 1919French Ways and Their Meaning. Wharton's decidedly Francophilic text proposes Frenchmixitéas a model for emulation in America, and suggests that a freer mingling of men and women in society will allow for greater cultural, intellectual, and artistic refinement generally. France, “the most grown up of the nations” according to Wharton, enjoys cultural superiority and a ripe, mature civilization largely due to its progressive views of the appropriateness of congenial relations between men and women. It is only in emulating the French model of gender relations by adopting a greater measure ofmixitéthat America can achieve maturity as a civilization and experience the full flowering of artistic and cultural life of which Wharton believes her capable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following the successful campaign to have the burqa and niqab banned from public use in France, and the continuing advocacy to have these garments banned in other Western liberal societies, I examine whether the two strongest challenges to the burqa and niqab succeed in justifying a ban on these forms of veil. Although I argue that they both fail in supporting a ban, the fact that some Muslim women may be coerced into full veiling gives liberal states a moral duty to interfere. In the light of this, I propose a comprehensive approach, which is better suited to ensure that the necessary conditions are in place for Muslim women to be the authors of their own lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muslim women wearing face-covering clothing are the subject of politically heated debates in a number of European countries, but reliable data on the number of these women (niqabis) are generally lacking. At the request of the Danish government, the authors conducted a survey ofniqabisin Denmark; this work is the first attempt to quantifyniqabisin a European country by sampling new data from several different kinds of sources. Sociologically,niqabisrepresent a rare and elusive group, which presents particular methodological challenges. The methods discussed and used, such as stratified sampling, use of key informants, and location sampling, are relevant in the studies of many contemporary religious sub-cultures. Extensive triangulation of the different data provided an estimated number ofniqabisof 150, with an uncertainty range of 100–200. This corresponds to 0.1–0.2% of Muslim women in Denmark. These figures tally with current rough estimates in other European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Throughout the recent war in Afghanistan, the burqa has represented the oppression of the Taliban. It has acted as a site of intersection and contestation among discourses of beauty, freedom, women's rights, human rights and religion. This article explores the 2010 Afghan Parliamentary campaign of Farkhunda Zahra Naderi, who uses the symbol of the burqa rather than her own face on her campaign posters. Naderi's campaign represents a disruption of the purported essence of the burqa because it denaturalizes the garment, purporting to turn the little window into a ‘window of power’. Naderi removes herself from her position of power as an educated Afghan woman with access to many opportunities and instead places the spotlight on the faceless Afghan woman in the burqa, symbolizing that it could be any woman on that campaign poster; it could be any Afghan woman running for office. This is her goal: to enable any woman to be successful, in the burqa or not, able to make the choice not to wear the burqa, but also to make the choice to wear the burqa but not be subjugated as a result. In this way the notion that there is any essence to the burqa itself is disrupted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islam has become the second religion in a profoundly de-Christianized Europe that has seen its understanding of modern secularity harden. European countries have difficulties coming to terms with the presence of the large Muslim minorities who settled following post-war industrialization. France is a particularly instructive case, as highlighted by the legislative ban it introduced in 2010 on the wearing of full Islamic veils in public spaces. A close study of the rejection by the highest administrative court of an application for French citizenship on the basis of the applicant's ‘radical’ practice of Islam reveals a profound incomprehension of the significance of the Muslim faith for new generations (and, more broadly, of the phenomenon of Islamic neo-fundamentalism worldwide). Radicalized expressions of faith have been interpreted as being by definition synonymous with hostility to liberal modernity and thus directly linked with Islamist terrorism. Yet Islam has in fact given a sector of society marginalized for primarily socioeconomic reasons a positive identity facilitating social integration. Islamophobia, fostered by incomprehension of the subjective meaning of contemporary Islamic faith, has gained ground in French political discourse, a phenomenon mirrored in other European societies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks at the way Islamophobia and the fear of loss of freedom intersect and the divergent ramifications of this. Recent international examples involving Muslim women are used for illustration. The article argues that fear of loss of freedom can lead to Islamophobia against Muslim women in the West, and that Islamophobia can lead to a loss of freedom for Muslim women in the West, in a constant loop. In particular, the article discusses the burqa ban in France and the development of the Eurabia myth. This European manifestation of Islamophobia has hardened attitudes towards Muslims, which has resulted in the loss of physical freedom for Muslim women in the West. This reverse loss of freedom is examined through the case of Marwa el-Sherbini. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that the Gerin Report marks a shift in French conversations on Islamic veiling practices, from a focus on the nature of public space or laïcité to a focus on the nature of female agency. Through a close analysis of three “paradoxes” (of femininity, individuality, and the human/object distinction) drawn from the report, this paper examines how the Gerin Commission, which produced the report, was particularly concerned with the way that French women ought to express their gender and sexuality as markers of their personhood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the 2010 Gerin Report on the prevalence and dangers of donning the voile intégral (full-face veils, namely niqabs and burqas) in the Republic to consider the implications of its configuration of Islam in France. With reference to five other recent reports and commissions in France on the visibility and appropriateness of religious signs in the public sphere, I suggest that the Gerin Report differs in two significant ways. First, the Report does not explicitly promote French secularism. While laïcité is underscored as integral to a vivre-ensemble (living together), the document positions full-face coverings not as religious symbols but as political, Islamist signs. Second, the Report singularly focuses on disputed Islamic head-coverings and, with reference to religious experts, carefully constructs niqabs and burqas as outside of theologically “proper” Republican Islam. Following consideration of these two features, I conclude by pointing to how the Gerin Report's politicization of the voile intégral is reflected in recent citizenship decisions and through the interactions of a large French feminist organization with Muslim women in a Parisian banlieue (suburb). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I examine Nelofer Pazira and Paul Jay's 2004 documentary, Return to Kandahar. The film's narrative revolves around Pazira's search for a friend (Pazira is an Afghani-Canadian). At one point, Pazira asks herself, "Should I go and pull her burqa off?" Given how the invasion of Afghanistan was cloaked in supposedly feminist desires to liberate Afghani women, it is not surprising that this question implies a "benevolent" or "modernizing" intervention. I focus on how Pazira asks this question of herself as an Afghan subject (a reflective question) but in the presence of a Western audience. Although this may support contemporary debates around authority over voice and representation, it also produces the native informant: the classic anthropological sidekick who tells her faithful audience about the novel idiosyncrasies of her "traditional" society while inviting various interventionist discourses. I thus argue that Return to Kandahar is not merely a site where series of discourses including feminist interventionist compulsions and Orientalist tropes on modernity and Islam are negotiated, it is also a site where Pazira becomes an Orientalized insider subject who mediates the audience's encounter with the Other; she is positioned within a supposedly traditional society and yet also exposed enough to modernity to speak to the audience. My discussion is organized around the question Pazira asks herself about taking off a woman's burqa: the voyeuristic witnessing of a conversation supposedly occurring within the text between the Afghan female subject and herself thus becomes a site to know, and ultimately intervene in the affairs of, the temporally-distanced "non-modern" Other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role which visual images, particularly photographs and photojournalism, play in encouraging women's rights advocacy. Images from Afghanistan of women wearing burqas are highlighted. It is suggested that, in addition to creating appropriate empathy, such photographs perpetuate Western prejudices against Middle Eastern cultures. It is proposed that photographs of women's rights abuses have been used by the media and the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to justify going to war with Afghanistan. The author emphasizes the need to understand the historical culture and context of an area in interpreting images.

The author addresses the announcement by French President Nicholas Sarkozy in the summer of 2009 about the ban of burqa in France. The author points out that France is not the first European country where the face-veil has become a topic of parliamentary debate, citing the experience of the Netherlands in December 2005. However, the author argues that the shift from religious symbol to sign of women's subjugation is hypocritical.

The author opposes the announcement by French President Nicholas Sarkozy in the summer of 2009 about the ban of burqa in France. The author argues that the statement revives the debate on men's control of women's bodies from the cultural perspectives of Muslims. Further, the author refutes the claim of Sarkozy that the burqa is not only a religious object, but a sign of women's subjugation.

The editors consider the response to an announcement by French President Nicholas Sarkozy in the summer of 2009 about the ban of burqa in France. Sarkozy reportedly argued that the burqa is not only a religious symbol, but also a sign of subjugation. The editors claim that the controversy raises themes about how identity can be connected to clothing, and material objects in general. Further, they contend that the wearing, as well as the banning, of the burqa or veil raises issues surrounding the cultural manifestations of global religious traditions.